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Official Selection 2014

Ten-year-old Anina Yatay Salas does not like her name; each part is a palindrome, which means it reads the same way forwards and backwards. Anina’s schoolmates love to tease her about it, until one day Anina can’t take it anymore and gets into a fight during recess with her archenemy, Yisel. Their punishment is rather unusual: the principal gives each of them a sealed black envelope and instructs them not to open it until they return to see her in seven days. The mystery of its contents will eat away at Anina and get her into all sorts of trouble.

Junior is nine years old and has stubbornly curly hair. He wants to have it straightened for his yearbook picture, like a fashionable pop singer with long, ironed hair. This puts him at odds with his mother Marta, a young, unemployed widow. Already overwhelmed by what it takes to survive in the chaotic city of Caracas, Marta finds it increasingly difficult to tolerate Junior’s fixation with his looks. The more Junior tries to look sharp and make his mother love him, the more she rejects him, until he is cornered, face to face with a painful decision.

In the breathtaking mountain region of Constanza, Dominican Republic, albinism is being passed down through multiple generations. This genetic condition manifests as an absence of pigmentation in the skin, eyes and hair, leaving those affected without any natural protection from the sun. Blanco portrays the daily life of six Dominican albinos of different ages, who strive to carry on with their lives as normal, in spite of their physical vulnerability.

Silvio Vega, a grandfather approaching the final stage of his life, demands that two of his grandchildren take his life because he wants to die by the hand of someone who bears his own blood. To fulfill this wish, they travel together to the plains of Casanare, Colombia, where Silvio lived in his younger days. However, when the grandchildren discover the truth about their grandfather’s past, they will defy his wishes, keeping him alive, agonizing, as punishment for his past actions.

Featuring an impressive roster of Cuba’s stage and film actors, Gerardo Chijona’s charming new film centres around two elderly gentlemen and the women they once loved. Still mourning the death of his wife Maruja, Lino Catalá’s now simple life is turned topsy-turvy when Larry Po, a man suffering from multiple personalities, informs him that Maruja led a double life as a bolero singer. Both men join forces to find out the truth about Maruja and the whereabouts of Esther Rodenas, the great love of Larry’s life.

Twenty-five years of stories from a tropical island prison. An inmate who harvested oranges, another who clandestinely sold coconuts. A birthday in solitary confinement and a dead body on the beach. An inmate who polished shoes while another distilled moonshine in secret. Several prisoners attempted, but just one escaped; dozens of sharks lurked in the waters, but only one attacked. From 1960 to 1985, a maximum security prison operated on the paradisiacal island of Gorgona, 35km off the Pacific Coast of Colombia.

Analía is a 20-year-old girl from a small town in Argentina who travels to Buenos Aires to deliver some handicrafts for her mother. By chance, an address mix-up leads her to a Muslim neighbourhood where she finds herself taking part in a ritual completely unknown to her. She is given several objects that seem to harbour a mysterious message: these include a tunic, a map and a recipe in Farsi. Enthralled by the new world she has entered, Analía decides to change her identity, and she begins to dress, speak and act like a young Muslim woman.